Category Archives: Chechnya

If you listen to some political pundits on both sides of the aisle, you might get the misimpression that Jihadists target America and America is viewed negatively in the Islamic world because of our support for Israel.

The problem with that line of thinking is that ignores some 1400 years of Islamic doctrine.

Each Jihadist terror organization around the globe has a specific goal in mind and that is the formation of an Islamic state ruled by Shariah.

This is very important to understand because this is a common goal of all the major Jihadist organizations across the world. It is shared by Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Lashkar e Taiba, Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and others and transcends any localized disagreements over borders and pure politics.

Israel could evaporate tomorrow and the overriding goal of the formation of Islamic states ruled by Shariah would not change a bit.

Those who blame Jihad on Israel need to ask themselves some important questions:

Did ISIS wage Jihad in Iraq and Syria to establish an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law because America supports Israel?

Did the Jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnap 300 young girls this spring because America supports Israel?

Did the Taliban seize power in Afghanistan in 1996 to establish an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law because America supports Israel?

Did the Jihadist terrorist group Al Shabaab attack the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013, killing 67 innocent civilians, because America supports Israel?

Did the Jihadist terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah bomb resorts in Bali, Indonesia in October 2002, killing 202 innocent civilians because America supports Israel?

Did Chechen Jihadist terrorists massacre 334 people, mostly school children, in Beslan, Russia, because the US supports Israel?

Did Jihadist terrorists with the group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) detonate a bomb in Marrakesh, Morroco in April 2011, killing 17 innocent civilians, because America supports Israel.

Of course, the answer to each and every one of these questions is no and the questions and answers prove a point. Jihad is truly global. Tragically, it is one of the most successful “exports” in the world over the past decade.

None of the regions mentioned above have a thing to do with Israel. Most don’t have anything to do with America.

The doctrine behind global jihad is over a thousand years old. In other words, the jihadist doctrine has been around far longer than America has even been in existence.

The Jihadists are not motivated only by our actions. They don’t just react to what we do. They have their own reasons for waging violent Jihad which have nothing to do with America, Israel or anything that you or I have any control over.

The quicker our politicians—both Democrat and Republican—gain a full understanding of this, the better.

The Islamic State is not simply an Iraqi problem or a Syrian problem. IS has metastasized into a worldwide organization with 20,000 recruits from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Germany. Even worse, Jihadists from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyef in the Philippines, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northwest Africa and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen have all pledged allegiance to IS.

There can no longer be any doubt that the global Islamic insurgency that some have been warning about for some time, amounts to a world war. Nevertheless, policymakers here in the U.S. continue to ignore or deny this reality.

Over the period of a generation, the West has allowed itself to be thoroughly infiltrated by a savage and barbaric belief system. This is evidenced by the global base of recruitment that the Islamic State has been able to take advantage of and the numerous public displays of support for IS in the West.

Note from the Telegraph report that the Jihadi appeared to detonate the bomb as she approached a metal detector at a security checkpoint:

A spokesman for the nation’s top investigative agency said the bomb appeared to have been detonated as the attacker approached a metal detector at the entrance to the central railway hub in the city of Volgograd.

This is not the first time Jihadists have targeted a transportation hub in Russia. A few years ago they detonated a bomb in a Moscow airport terminal. It should also be pointed out that the FBI intercepted a plot earlier this month in Wichita, Kansas in which a Jihadi sought to bomb an airport terminal.

The point here is that, as security services seek to tighten access to airplanes and trains, which have been targeted in the past, they are creating massive bottlenecks in passenger terminals, particularly at the security checkpoints that are ostensibly there to keep travelers safe. As a result, the Jihadis now target the lines of travelers in the passenger terminals themselves.

We have blogged about this in the past and it seems that security services have no answer at this point for this new Jihadi tactic:

Be advised the legend and graphics have no meaning for the present situation. Map is shown strictly to show proximity of Volgograd, site of Jihadist attack today, to Sochi, site of Summer Olympic Games in 6 weeks.

Note also that both Volgograd and, rather ominously, Sochi, are quite close to Chechnya and Dagestan, two hotbeds of the global Islamic insurgency:

Volgograd was once called Stalingrad. There are now conflicting reports that the Islamikaze bomber may have been a man, not a woman, or that the woman may have had a male accomplice. Note that the cited source for these contradictory reports are Russian law enforcement agencies, something that isn’t terribly comforting or surprising given the circumstances:

The UN Secretary General has condemned the attack (we’re sure the Jihadis are quaking in their boots over that). Note also that this is the second Islamikaze bombing in Volgograd in the past two months. Another female Islamikaze bomber blew herself up on a bus two months ago, killing 7 innocent victims and wounding scores of others.

Note especially that Russia has been victimized numerous times in recent years by Islamikaze bombers, including females. Also included is some general information on Russia’s extraordinary security measures to protect the Olympics, including measures that would never be approved of here in the US due to trespassing on civil liberties and the overt use of military forces on a direct, wide scale, as opposed to a support capacity. Hopefully the Russian measures will prove effective once the Olympics get underway.

Russian authorities have tentatively identified the Islamikaze bomber as Oksana Aslanova, a Dagestani citizen whose husband was a Jihadi killed by Russian special operations forces. Evidently Aslanova was known to Russian authorities and she “got around,” having reportedly been married to other Jihadist terrorists as well.

This article from The Age in Australia includes a close-up image of the entrance to the railway station. It appears that the Russians smartly placed the metal detectors at the entrance, so most of the people in the crowded station escaped injury. The article also contains more background on “black widow” Islamikaze bombers that have struck Russia. Incidentally, there was evidently a previously little-noticed car bomb in Pyatigorsk, Russia on Friday:

A Saudi national said to be the North Caucasus point man of Al Qaeda and the brain behind spate of suicide attacks in Russia was killed by security forces in the country’s restive province of Chechnya, officials said. The militant only known by his nom-de-guerre of Moganned who had been eluding Russian forces for over three years was killed along with two other militants in a shootout in the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Shali district of Chechnya, during a search operation, Russia’s anti-terrorism agency announced. Along with Chechen militant leader Doku Umrav, Moganned was the most wanted terrorist in the region. “One of the militants eliminated has been identified as the main emissary of International Terrorist Organisation, Al Qaeda in the northern Caucasus, a citizen of Saudi Arabia by the name of Moganned”, the agency said. “Almost all acts of terror using suicide bombers in the last few years were prepared with the involvement of the Saudi national”, it said. Russia has been rocked by an airport bombing that killed 37 in January this year and twin suicide metro bombings last year which killed more than 40 people.

In an editorial column published on 18 December, the editors of The Toledo Blade point out that capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden would not defeat Al Qaeda and capturing or killing Mullah Omar would not defeat the Taliban.

The fact of the matter is, Al Qaeda and the Taliban could cease to exist tomorrow and the U.S. and Western civilization would still face a Jihadist threat. This overall war–which we at TTB believe should be properly called World War IV–goes way beyond Al Qaeda.

Already, there are spin-offs of Al Qaeda in the Asia-Pacific Region, Southwest Asia, North Africa, Europe and the U.S. These are loosely formed groups which are inspired by Al Qaeda and model themselves in some way off of Al Qaeda, but are not operationally attached to Al Qaeda in the classic sense. Bin Laden and Zawahiri don’t command them and those two Jihadi leaders could be vaporized by a JDAM tomorrow and the global offshoots would still exist.

(Incidentally, we believe that Osama Bin Laden is dead and has been for some time. More on that in a future posting.)

The Jihad extends beyond Al Qaeda as well. When the Jihadist terrorists attacked Mumbai in November of 2008, it was automatically assumed that they were Al Qaeda. When it was surmised that they were in fact Lashkar-e-Taiba, that organization was labeled as an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Now, it turns out that, while both Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba are both Salafist Jihadist terrorist organizations and ideological allies, they are separate groups. One could be wiped off the face of the earth this afternoon and the other would still be waging Jihad.

Then there is the whole issue of Jihadist groups who are certainly NOT part of Al Qaeda. Hezbollah is the prime example of this. Hezbollah is Shia and, while they have cooperated with Al Qaeda in the past, they are definitely not part of Al Qaeda. Moreover, Hezbollah is perhaps even more dangerous than Al Qaeda due to their backing from Iran and a robust infrastructure set up on every continent, with the possible exception of Antarctica.

The fact that some of these groups are not actively engaged in ongoing operations against the U.S. or the West on a day-to-day basis should not be construed to mean that they are somehow not waging Jihad against us.

On one of the laptop computers uncovered in the investigation of Lashkar-e-Taiba after the Mumbai attacks, it was discovered that the group had a global list of 320 possible targets for attack. And the recon man for the Mumbai attacks turns out to have been a guy from Chicago.

It has been falsely and widely stated that Hezbollah has not been engaged in operations against the U.S. since the late 1980s. They have. Not only did Hezbollah help Al Qaeda set up the two East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, but Hezbollah was extremely active in the Iraq insurgency. Senior Hezbollah operatives were captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in the past few years and Hezbollah fighters were killed by U.S. G.I.s right along with members of Al Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” in Iraq:

America is, unfortunately, largely in denial about the war we are in and that makes victory all the more elusive. Too many believe that “killing Bin Laden” will end it or that wiping out Al Qaeda will mean victory. This is simply untrue.

There is a global Jihad being waged against America and its allies. It is being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq to be sure. But it is also being waged in Israel, Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, Western Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, the Philippines, Central and South America and, yes, right here in North America.

Over the years, Islamic jihadist terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam have targeted mass transit systems around the world.

This occurred in 1995 in the Paris Metro rail system when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) detonated a series of bombs which killed 8 innocent victims and wounded 122:

Then, on 6 February 2004, Chechen Jihadist terrorists set off an Islamikaze attack in the Moscow Metro rail system which killed 41 innocent victims:

On 11 March 2004, Islamic jihadist terrorists thought to be affiliated with, or inspired by, Al Qaeda set off a series of bombs in the Madrid rail system, killing 191 and wounding over 1,800 innocent victims:

No doubt because of this history, security authorities in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada are taking appropriate measures to guard against such an attack, especially during the upcoming Olympic Games to be held there.

The transit police in Vancouver are planning on using specially-trained bomb-sniffing dogs to detect explosive devices in the Vancouver transit system. Dogs are extremely effective at this type of duty because they have a keen sense of smell and seem never to tire or suffer from lapses which severely effect their job performance. Dogs have successfully detected explosive devices in security situations for decades around the world.

So what does a local Muslim leader in Vancouver, Shawket Hassan, have to say about all this?

He is “worried” about bomb sniffing dogs because dogs are considered unclean in Islam and Muslims might get touched by such dogs while on their way to pray.

Note that Mr. Hassan has expressed no “worry” about the threat of terrorism to the transit system. He has only express worry about the possibility of getting dog saliva on his person.

It’s difficult not to think of the victims in Paris, Moscow, Madrid and London when you read Mr. Hassan’s comments. Those people were killed by terrorists who openly stated that they believed that they were acting in the name of Islam. Someone might want to remind Mr. Hassan that dogs don’t discriminate according to religion. The bomb-sniffing dogs will be protecting innocent Muslims who ride the Vancouver transit system as well as everyone else.

Mr. Hassan should be thanking Allah that such animals exist on earth to protect us all from evil.